What would you pay for a smartphone app that gives you 10 seconds’ notice that an earthquake is about to hit?

It’s a question consumers may soon face. Scientists are developing smaller, better and cheaper sensors to monitor ground motion, raising the chances that they’ll be able to create an earthquake warning system. And that’s just for starters.

There’s a revolution going on in sensor technology. Call it the rise of the micromachines. Researchers at such places as the University of California San Diego are developing tiny machines and itsy-bitsy motors that are being used for everything from monitoring a person’s health to spotting when a hillside might collapse.

The field is called microelectromechanical systems, or MEMS, and UC San Diego has hired one of its stars. Albert Pisano is leaving UC Berkeley to become dean of the Jacobs School of Engineering, where he’ll continue his MEMS research.

We spoke to Pisano about the nature of the field and where it might be headed.

Q: You’re helping push for the “Trillion-Sensor Universe.” What is that, and how does it affect people’s lives?

A: Imagine a world in which, for less than one cent, you can know the freshness of a piece of meat. Imagine that you can measure vital signs in your body and have them recorded. Imagine you could discreetly monitor the ingestion of drugs for things like chronic pain or cancer. This is the kind of world that is coming through the growing use of small, inexpensive sensors. It’s a world in which valuable information is discreetly harvested and put at your disposal.

Q: Does it go beyond things like health care and food?

A: Yes. Sensors will be increasingly be used to measure things in the environment that can be dangerous. We will be able to monitor the movement of soils that will let us know when a landslide might occur, or measure the water concentration of trees in the forest, learning when we might have a problem, such as infections under the bark. Alternatively, you could map local humidity and pinpoint areas in which forest fires might most easily start. We’ll do the same with agriculture, where sensors will give us more accurate maps of nutrients in the soil.

These applications are not limited to the U.S. Let’s talk about the Philippines and two statistics: The Philippines has 1.7 percent of the world’s population. The country also has 15.4 percent of all deaths that are related to landslides. It’s an incredible societal issue in that country. As a technologist, I try to solve problems like this. Maybe I can use this “Trillion Sensor” vision to make rugged sensors that are part of a small rod that you hammer several meters into the ground. You’d do that because it’s known that there is some tilt in the ground just before a landslide. If we could monitor that, we could spot dangerous areas and send out alarms. That’s one of the research projects I’ve been working on at Berkeley.

Q: We already have strain meters on earthquake faults. Are scientists hoping to do something more?

A: The strain sensors we currently have are great, but there are not enough of them. Reducing the size, cost, weight and power consumption will make it easier to install many more sensors. This will improve the accuracy and reliability of the data we harvest. And because of their small size, the arrays of sensors may be unobtrusive and unnoticeable.

Q: I wear a Fitbit, which counts the steps I take every day. Fitbits are popular, but will wearable sensors like them become a huge business?

A: Your Fitbit is a wonderful product, but imagine being able to unobtrusively wear more sensors, especially distributed on the neck, shoulders and back. There are researchers who are using data from these places to determine onset of muscle spasm and fatigue, as well as the onset of improper gait and movement. This may lead to an explosion of the market for personal “digital health” as a preventative health care tool.

Q: Why has there been such explosive growth in the use of sensors?

A: First, there’s a growing appreciation that sensors are not just sophisticated little devices that you use in a laboratory. They’re becoming an important part of the micro-electronics market. You already see them being used in automobile air bags. Secondly, the thing that’s really kicking this into high gear is the adoption of many types of sensors in cellphones. They have accelerometers and gyroscopes. You’ll see new sensors that will measure things like altitude and temperature. The major creative energy in industry has shifted away from desktop and laptop computers to smartphones and platforms. The phones with the best apps and the best display and now the best sensors are the ones rising to the forefront. There are 600 million to 700 million cellphones manufactured each year. If you have an incredibly good sensor and the means to produce it, you can become part of that market.

Q: How is the technology evolving?

A: The next wave of sensors won’t live on phones, they will live on things around you and communicate with your phone. The next wave means that the sensors are attached to items in your home, your automobile, your office and the artifacts of your personal life. Your smartphone will communicate with the sensors. Then it will collect, analyze and present useful information to you. One example: Extreme sun load is detected on your sofa and chairs. The sensors enable your smartphone to deduce what’s going on and perhaps suggest that you draw the blinds to reduce the sunshine entering a room on the south side of your home.

Q: Most people tend to think of sensors as being really small. Is that the case?

A: It depends on what you mean by small. There are two ways to describe sensors. One way is to say they’re about the size of a grain of rice. The other way is to say the sensors are super-thin, like Saran Wrap. You could have a sensor that covers an area of, say, six inches square, but it is really thin and, by transmitting an intermittent signal, helps you keep track of where your laptop is.

Q: I tend to think of sensors as delicate, fragile. Are they?

A: Sometimes small means extremely rugged. Consider an old-style personal computer. If you dropped it off the table, it would break. Your laptop is much smaller; it survives a fall from the table without any breakage, save a few scrapes on the outside. A cellphone is even more rugged. So, smaller things can be intrinsically resistant to shock.

Now think much smaller. Think of a postage stamp or a store coupon or your ATM card. It is hard to think of being able to damage it simply by throwing it down on the ground. You’d really have to set out to physically crush it to destroy it. And so it is with sensors. As they move to ever smaller formats, they are more robust.

Q: So where will sensor technology be in a couple of years?

A: I see electronics that have a lot more functions. They will work on thin films of paper and plastic. So the “Saran Wrap” circuit is coming. I also see rugged sensors that can survive fire. Imagine a fire-proof radio. You could put it on a gas burner and nothing would happen to it. I would imagine that the San Diego Fire & Rescue Department would love to have a set of smoke and flame sensors in each room of a large building with which they could communicate during a fire, so that they could rapidly make a map of where the fire is and where it is going.